A Breath Without Air
by Scribbler
Summary: [one shot] What is it like to be the last who remembers? The last who knew the great warriors when they were more than simply names and stories? Just a small ficlet investigating 18 during a vulnerable moment.


Disclaimer: As always, I own nothing other than the clothes I stand up in, a bunch of floppy disks and a pot-plant called Sid. Who actually needs watering, now that I think about it...  
  
A/N: Though this is by no means my first piece of fanfiction, it's my first foray into DBZ territory, and so is somewhat of a departure for me. Inspiration came from a throwaway scene in Sholio's fic 'Eternal', between Vegeta and #18, so you can lay blame at her feet for this little offering. Thanks for the title go to Daniel Beddingfield, who came on the radio just as I was trying to think what to call it. The song in question is 'I'll Never Leave Your Side', which, while the ultimate in schmaltz, is filled with lyrics that all seem tailor-made to be fic titles.  
  
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'A Breath Without Air' By Scribbler  
  
July 2003  
  
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I've lived the past few years waiting for this moment. Not anticipating it, as such, since that would suggest I'd been looking forward to it; but not really dreading it, either. It is a fact I have long since reconciled myself with - an inescapable truth, as one of the others might say. I'm not a poetic soul, nor have I ever claimed to be, but in this instance their words seem more appropriate than my own.   
  
I knew this day would come eventually, just as I always knew that when it finally did arrive, I'd be nowhere near ready for it. Not that I'd ever admit a weakness like that to any soul - living or dead. I've lived amongst these people and their offspring long enough to recognise how their theory of talking-about-it-helps-the-pain works. It's a large part of their lives, this psychiatrist-patient bond they adopt whenever they lose one of their own - which happens more often than I care to think about. Sometimes the roles switch, and sometimes it takes a while for the invariable barriers to break down before they wax lyrical on their loss; but it's the same each time. Even their descendants do it - I've watched them enough times, when they bury yet another part of their history. A part of their families' pasts.   
  
I learned long ago that it just doesn't work for me.  
  
There is no pain, you see. Pain is something that catches one unawares, unprepared and off guard. Though I'm not as ready as I could be, I'm not exactly caught on the hop, either. How could I be? I've watched the signs over the years; seen the gradual wrinkles and slight curve of her back begin to take shape. I've seen tiny children grow into men and women - the new protectors of Earth, some of them. Hell, a few are my own students. Though I never figured myself as a sensei, when the others started leaving for their final rest it seemed right to take on a pupil or two. If for nothing else than to fill the empty gaps in my day.   
  
There was a time when I would have killed for a little peace and quiet. There was another time when I would've done just that, too. My life has been... a mixed bag, I suppose you could call it; constantly reshuffling both myself and how I go about things as the world changes around me. A person can't rely on affairs to stay the same forever. Kami knows, I tried that and it didn't work. One has to move on, get on with life and such like. That was something Kuririn taught me very early on. He'd lost his friends before, seen them die right before his eyes. He'd been dead himself a few times, too. Even back then, when I consciously shunned the emotions that reminded me of my own humanity, I still wondered how it was he was able to go on after something like that.   
  
I saw my brother die. Once, when Dr. Gero stole his life away and stored it in a cyberbiotic shell; once when Cell absorbed that new body; and once when I had a hand in his death.   
  
The first two were strange, caught up as I was in my own callousness and disregard for life. It's very difficult to retrain oneself to feel things - emotion is instinct, and instinct has no place in a clinical, cyberbiotic mind. By the time I managed reclaiming my own sentiments, his dual passings were little more than a slightly bitter memory that lived with him in the woods, and I did my utmost to forget them.   
  
The third time was different, though. I experienced death in another sense that day that #17 was reborn in the ruined city. Gero and Myuu couldn't see, they were too blinded by science and the need for power; they couldn't hope to feel what I did. I touched on a despair I hadn't felt since the time of Majin Buu, and felt a strange, diluted kind of hatred for something that had once been my own kin.   
  
I'm not entirely sure why I'm saying all this now. Though I'm by no means the same person I used to be, I'm still not overly fond of great displays of emotion and outpourings of the heart. Kuririn's death on the highway sparked an outburst, granted, but afterwards, when everything was over, and I had chance to ponder my reaction, I found myself slightly dismayed that, despite how I was rather more physically enhanced than the average human, I was still prey to such... indiscriminate flare-ups. The idea that feelings could be so overwhelming that I could actually lose my sense of reason was a disconcerting one, and, I'll admit, it was a few days after Kuririn was resurrected before I could hold a conversation with him that lasted more than thirty seconds. For a while I couldn't even bring myself to look at him, since both he and Marron were a reminder of my own frailties and flaws.   
  
Vegeta is probably the only one amongst the Z-Senshi who could understand my feelings on the subject. He dislikes talking about the internal as much as I do, but his stoic silence is something of a statement by itself. Sometimes, I think I can see my own situation in him - a fighter, sworn to destroying this petty little speck of a planet, instead finding himself an intrinsic part of it and setting up home with one of its inhabitants.   
  
Thinking about it, my past experiences as a human probably stood me in better stead than him; but still, his interactions with Bulma and Trunks, both prior to and after the whole Buu incident, were more than slightly reminiscent of my relationship with my husband and daughter from time to time. Those occasions when I take a step back and realise just what I've done with my life, especially. What I've consigned myself to, and what I've both lost and gained from it all.   
  
When the girl known as Juuhachigou died and I was born, I didn't have to think about anything but myself. She took her humanity and all its weaknesses and shortcomings with her, and all I had to worry about was entertaining myself any way I saw fit. Even #17 and #16 were just passengers on my gravy train, as far as I was concerned. I may have taken pause, had they died, but I doubt I would have mourned them.   
  
In all likelihood, I almost certainly wouldn't have even known how, had I wanted to.   
  
Then came Kuririn and his friends, fighting us, tooth and nail, and then fighting *for* us against Cell. I couldn't comprehend their actions. My circuitry just wasn't designed to accept concepts like loyalty, friendship and all the other things humans et al seem to hold so dear. It wasn't until I experienced it for myself, when Kuririn crushed Bulma's device and told me to run, that I gained a sliver of understanding. It might just have been a memory from the time when I *did* know the things those frail little creatures liked to witter on about, or it might have been something else. Either way, it was there, and after it rooted itself in my brain, there it stayed.   
  
Hence I learned what it was to be human again. I allowed Kuririn to teach me. It was a struggle, especially at first, but then, he always did say that the greatest things in life come at the highest price.   
  
He should know. He paid it often enough.   
  
Death is no stranger to me. I've experienced it myself, and I know that the afterlife isn't just some bunch of hokey cooked up to keep people doing good deeds. I know it's a nice place - I've been there. The plants and fluffy clouds and endless greenery are... pleasant, if not exactly my style, but I suppose it's as close to the generic concept of paradise as one is ever likely to get. I've known people who've been there, too, and they've verified Other World on their newly restored lives.   
  
Death shouldn't have any sting left. Not anymore.   
  
I've been through this scenario many times, but it's been a few years since the last time I had to sit at a bedside this way. It seems almost... perverse; the more time progresses, and leaves me by the wayside. I've seen those who considered me their friend wrinkle and shrivel, become bow-backed and adopt the rambling shuffle of the very young and very old. I've seen their children; their grandchildren and great grandchildren grow up and grow old, while my skin remains smooth and my hair ungreyed.   
  
Maybe that's why I'm saying these things now. Introspection was never my forte, but the room is so quiet, there doesn't seem that much else to do. I don't want to look away from her face, but the silence is stifling. It *needs* a voice to fill it, and I've already exhausted my supply of small-talk and niceties.   
  
I doubt she can even hear my muttering anymore - if she can, she certainly gives no sign of it.   
  
Outpourings of the heart. I never liked them. I find my own attempts even more objectionable - that's the primary reason why I requested to be alone at my vigil. In case I slipped. Others wanted to be here, too, but as Matriarch they let me have my way. The youngest are scared of me, I know. I must make an imposing figure - so old, and yet, still so powerful. Bragging is not a factor; this is a simple assertion. Since Vegeta died and went to join his immediate family in Other World, I've been the most powerful warrior the Earth has left to offer.   
  
The Saiyan Prince went out in true style - no hospital ward and bedpan for him. Saiyans are naturally long-lived, though in a quieter moment he once admitted that the true extent of his people's average lifespan was unknown. He'd never come across an aged Saiyan in his youth, and all stories and legends told of death in battle - the ultimate honour.  
  
Vegeta was such a stickler for the old ways; always professing he was 'a Saiyan warrior', and exacting his lineage to anyone and everyone who cared to listen - and some who didn't. Goku never seemed to care a whit about what colour blood, blue or red, ran through his veins, and Bulma always seemed suitably unimpressed - though Trunks seemed to put more awe in the declaration, at least when he was a child.   
  
When Vegeta outlived them all...   
  
It came as no surprise to learn he'd died whilst away in space on another of his jaunts. Exploration, adventuring - he tried many ways to fill the spaces they all left in his life. He'd never go so far as to call them his loved ones, but he cared for them. Even Goku, in some strange, savage way. Vegeta's descendants were as much in awe of him as my own are of me, and he tired of them and their constant fearfulness whenever he was around. From what Kuririn told me of his younger days, that was something of an irony. All Vegeta wanted was the family he'd created, the one he'd chosen and protected for as long as they'd let him; not the offshoots that came with it. Though he never told me that in so many words, I'm not so out of touch with my contemplative side that I couldn't see it for myself.   
  
Mortality. It's not something I like to consider, but it's been a companion as the years go on. And on. And on.   
  
Metals rusts. Mechanisms stop working. Flesh ages and withers. Dies. But not any creation of Dr. Gero's. No, the good doctor made sure his achievements would live on for a long, long time. Whether he meant for them to outlive himself remains to be seen, but the fact is that he wanted his work to see the world to its conclusion. In some not-small part, he wanted his work to *cause* that conclusion.  
  
The day I die, it won't be by any natural means.   
  
I've wondered, more times than I care to admit, just how I'll go. In battle, perhaps? Earth has been a peaceful place in the decades since Goku left with Shenlong, but peace is all relative. I may yet have to protect this planet. Maybe my end will come in some freak accident, or in the training of one of my pupils. Maybe I'll cross over fighting the Good Fight; protecting the line of those I once called friends.  
  
Maybe I'll just get run over by a truck or something.  
  
Or something.  
  
I'm meeting death again, saying hello to an old acquaintance in this dark little cubbyhole of a room. Not my own end, but it needs someone to greet it, and I'm the only one awake right now. I know it's here, creeping under the doorframe. I know I should go and rouse the others, tell them it's time to say their final goodbyes, but I don't do a thing.   
  
Irrationally, part of me wants this moment to belong to just us two - the last of those who remember the greats. Goku, Piccolo, Gohan - they're just names, now. She and I, through some twist of fate, are the only ones left who knew the people behind the stories. Even Pan is long gone - a stroke five years ago that took her from us in her sleep. Strange, to think that Goku's descendant could be outlived by lowly humans. It seems that Fate does indeed have a sense of irony it likes to act out every now and again.  
  
I must say, the humour of any of it escapes me.  
  
It's a miracle we managed to claw back these last few years. Medical science has come a long way, but the will to live was always paramount. She wanted to live - I wanted her to live. And so she did.  
  
But even I can now see that the will she used to beat off death is no longer enough. Everyone can - her children, her grandchildren, all those she knew and loved and cared for. She always had a bigger heart than mine; more open to those around her. Emotion was - is - her friend; whereas, to me, it is a hunter.   
  
I am not, nor will I ever consent to being prey.  
  
We knew it was coming. As I said before, I've been waiting the past few years for this precise moment, gauging how long I had left with her. I've talked more in the last few hours than I have in the last decade as I sensed time growing shorter between us. If I wanted to divulge it, I'd say that it's almost sad how much I kept back in all the years prior to this day. Was it really so much easier to talk when she couldn't listen, than when she might actually answer me back, or make comments on what I said?   
  
I could join them all in an instant, if I wanted. An energy ball bounced off a wall, or that new guided ki-beam I've been working on with little Cinnamon, my latest student. She has as firm a grasp of ki-control as any, but her talents are still below par compared to those in her ancestry. Well, apart from that idiot, Paresu, at any rate. I'm convinced she gets her flighty streak from her Great-Great-Grandmother.  
  
But I've never followed through on any of those thoughts, however fleeting. The Z-Senshi gave me a gift when they brought me back from where I died in Cell's belly. If it weren't so maudlin, I'd admit that it would be a waste of that gift for me to throw it all away in a fit of pique or loneliness. Earth needs a protector, and that irony Fate keeps under-wraps chose me, one of those once so dedicated to obliterating the place, to be that protector.   
  
But for now, my own life isn't the one in question.   
  
Her hand is warm between mine, her palm dry. The intravenous is little more than a fashion accessory now, since her body stopped absorbing the perennial nutrition a week ago. She's been without nourishment for days; too weak to eat, and too tired to feel any lingering hunger. Her hair seems thinner, but that might just be a trick of the light. She asked right back at the beginning that she have a room with a window, and, given I was standing behind her wheelchair giving the porter the evil-eye, the admin staff didn't see fit to argue with the request.  
  
She's so thin, so sallow. Sitting here, my eyes - sharper than the average human's, obviously - can pick out every new crease and wrinkle she's gained since coming to stay here, in spite of the poor light. I could probably name the exact times she gained them, too, since I've been here almost every waking moment. Were I a more familiar, accommodating person, the hospital staff and I might be on first-name terms by now.   
  
Kami, what to say? Perhaps I should tell her things about herself, instead of me. But what could I possibly say that hasn't already been said by her children's children? She's such a good person, in spite of the superficiality she suffered as a child and teenager. I remember trips to clothes stores, traipsing around city centres with Kuririn in tow lugging boxes upon boxes of purchases. It's difficult to reconcile that girl with the old woman now laid out before me.   
  
I've seen her give so much of herself to others, asking for nothing in return, sharing everything she has with a smile and a kind word. That's not to say there hasn't been the odd tantrum or two - there have been plenty of those, as well. But she's still so kind-hearted and strong and filled with more compassion than I think she could ever have learned from me.   
  
There's not enough time. There's never enough time, but it's only ever realised when it's too late. I have so much that I meant to say; so much more I need to tell her. Just a few more days. Why couldn't we have just a few more days?  
  
I need to let go. I need to let *her* go...  
  
But even though I know I'm supposed to, I just can't bring myself to let go of her hand; and so, when the final breath comes and goes, I'm still pressing as hard as I dare, skin bleached with the effort not to crush her fragile, bird-like bones by accident. I hear the whisper of her out-breath; see her chest fall, as I have done a thousand times tonight. And when it fails to rise again, and the clear plastic mask wheezes with oxygen pumping out of and under the sides, trying to force air into lungs that will no longer accept it, I see it all.  
  
And I feel... empty.  
  
No soul-crushing grief, no sudden sense of irrefutable loss. All I can feel is a strange numbness, almost like the pins and needles I used to get as a child, before Dr. Gero altered my nerve endings and blood-flow so that it didn't happen anymore. It's almost like loneliness, and yet... not. It's more, but less. Somewhere in the middle... just to the left of every other emotion I've ever re-taught myself to feel.  
  
I'll remember this moment forever, whether in this life or the next. I don't have a clock or watch, and I stopped consulting my inner chronometer a long time ago, but it's night outside, as it has been for a few hours. The shutters are drawn, the door on the brightly lit corridor shut, but I don't need proper light to see.   
  
Tentatively, I reach out with my ki, probing for the waning life I've watched dwindle for so long. And for the first time, I sense nothing. It's gone - truly gone, not just suppressed, like when we all thought Gohan was dead and it turned out he was only unconscious. No, this time I search actively for the spark I know better than my own, and I can't even find a last trace. There's no need for pulse-checks, as the nurses will no doubt perform when they arrive. The flat-line only compounds what I already know.   
  
And yet, I still hold onto her hand.  
  
I find myself thinking of scenes from those movies Kuririn used to make me watch - Yamcha, too, whenever he took time out from his busy schedule to grace us with his presence. Some part of me has retained memories of what I'm supposed to do, what I'm supposed to feel at a moment like this. I'm supposed to hug her, call for her to come back to me whilst sobbing into her nightie. I'm supposed to scream the word 'no' and plead for a little longer to whatever deity is listening. I'm supposed to leak only a single tear and let it trail poignantly down my non-blotchy cheek, as I remain strong in the face of tragedy. I'm supposed to make a fuss. I'm supposed to say something touching, yet cliché. I'm supposed to lean on others, and let others lean on me as we face this great loss together, closer than ever.  
  
But instead, I do none of these things. All I can think to do is sit here, watching and listening to the oxygen being pumped fruitlessly into her mouth and nose.   
  
I don't think I ever just sat and looked at her between the time when she was a child, nestled in my arms, and the time when I could no longer let her pass a night on her own, lest I return the next day to find out she was already gone. She seems so peaceful, so at ease that my head turns of its own accord and my eyes voluntarily shut for the first time in hours.   
  
I rise and jab a finger at the machines dotted around her bed. A sharp fizzle, and they whine into submission. Another conquest, but one that I shan't be adding to my repertoire.   
  
My movement changes nothing other than to restore silence to the room. The moment is still a frozen one. Just past death, that nothingness that accompanies the sudden absence of a soul from a body. It was something like this when Kuririn died, but somehow not so extreme. I mourned him, the man I loved, married, had a family with. This is different. This is part of me, the last part of me.   
  
Juuhachigou might better understand what to do, now. But I'm not her, and I haven't been for a very long time.  
  
I circle the bed, moving aside a useless piece of equipment to better reach her side. I still have hold of her hand, and even when I lean over I don't let it go. I hover for a few seconds, like I'm embarrassed to be seen yielding to my weaknesses like this. But who really cares if I indulge myself this once? After all this time, I think I've earned a moment or two of my own.   
  
Quickly, I let my forehead rest against hers. I feel my skin rub against her leathery wrinkles and the few coarse hairs marking her face. I close my eyes, take a moment to commit that feeling to memory, and then I lift my head. My eyes are dry, my vision clear, as I look down on her for one last time.   
  
My mouth moves of its own accord, forming shapes and letting my throat create noises I had no intention of making. I should have hot tears welling in my eyes, rolling down my cheeks and dripping onto the floor. I should be juddering with badly held-back sobs. But all I can muster is a hitch as my voice snags on that single rusty whisper.   
  
It's tiny, but it's enough. She knew, in the end. They always do.  
  
"Goodbye."  
  
No parent should have to outlive their child.  
  
I lay her hand by her side and let go.  
  
Goodbye, my daughter.   
  
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FINIS.  
  
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